City Council - Regular Meeting

is called to order. Friday, January 23rd, 4 p.m. Um, the Alexandria City Council meeting and council committee meetings are broadcast live and may be viewed live by the public on Optum cable channel 4. A rebarcast may be viewed on Optum Cable Channel 4 in the city of Alexandria website. Um, madam, may we have roll call, please? Mr. Johnson, here. Miss Felter, here. Mr. Green, present. Mr. Fowler here. Mr. Ar present. Mr. Lardain here. Miss Perry here. Madam President, you have a forum.

Okay. Emergency Ordinance number one, an ordinance to address a public emergency from January 2026, winter weather event, to declare a public emergency, and to authorize the mayor to enter into any necessary contracts with power line contractors, tree trimming or chipping contractors, debris removal contractors, or other contractors providing services necessary for utility and public works and other public services and necess Necessity for the city to amend any current contracts with existing contractors related thereto to ratify contracts executed by the mayor related to the city response to January 2026 winter weather event and damages related there too to authorize the mayor and the city to enter into contracts and receive assistance from state, federal, and other public agencies for assistance or reimbursement for costs and expenses related to services and material associated with city responses to January 2026 winter weather event and damages and impacts associated there with to authorize the mayor to consider and extend overtime pay compensation and benefits to city employees to amend the city operating budget to provide additional funds and authorized expenses rel related to the decor. operation of an emergency and otherwise to provide with the respect there too.

Need a motion please. Second motion by um Councilman Fowler, second by Councilman Ford. We have any public comments.

Public comment. Public comments. Do we we don't have any public comments? Okay. Is there a discussion? Discussion. Yeah. Question. How many contracts need to be ratified? Uh, don't know. How many? We haven't We don't know yet. That's the point. Okay. Have they even been entered into? I don't think I don't think we've entered into one yet. There may be some oral agreements that not oral contracts, but oral like putting people on hold to try to pick them up, crews, etc.

Uh, but no contracts entered yet, but we expect there will be. Well, I mean the ordinance optimized ratification typically the ratification has already been so place. So the ordinance covers as it does each time in case that we wouldn't know or by this time there was one entered that you would be ratifying a past act. It's just that it didn't happen yet. Okay. Um do we have any warming stations mayor or we didn't? Um Salvation Army uh is standing up a station uh very different group. I think you're on the board, but thank y'all very much. Different mindset about how they will be dealing with that. So, no charges. So, so folks will be required to pay again. Well, I don't know their rules. That's their rules, not city rules.

Okay.

Uh but the uh setup that we have, it looked good. So, what I did was I I went over there. I had a long call about making sure that they had some resources they need. We want to make sure they have some generation resources to to backs stop them if something were to happen. So you guys know they're on what I think we'd call the Foys connection, which is not a lot of trees and things that can fall on lines down here. So City Hall, you know, we're back stop with generation, but we would be worried about that. They don't have a standalone generator there, but they're on uh a leg of our system that just rarely goes down because there's nothing around it to knock it down. That still concerns me if there are people there. So, uh, we are looking at some of our own resources. My executive order, which I'll go over, and your ordinance would allow us to bring, uh, public assets for that kind of purpose. And this kind of emergency would be an exception to the normal rule that we would never locate public assets on anything private. Remember, this is a notfor-profit handling uh, a public emergency that has a a public purpose and an effect on the public world. So, we've got to make sure of that. All of that to say, we've been in touch with Ghost Up. We are going to probably help them make a request to get a generator here to back them up rather than try to do it through the city. But if I can't, I'll do it through the city.

It's a reimbursement issue. That's all there is that makes it I never toured that that particular one. How many bids they have?

So, I don't want to get into their business, but not many. Let me just say at this I don't because I don't want to Yeah, it's a low number, but because I don't want that to put them in a box for normal operations. Let me say this, Mr. Johnson, this way. For this event, I went to it to put my own eyes on it. I just walked in by myself after a call. There's plenty of room and we are providing plenty of help to that facility where it can stand up. So, it's a big big facility. There's a lots of parts in it, a chapel and other things that can be converted. They have a plan. the sergeant walked me through everything. Uh I was I can see how they can make this happen. We have a lot of CS from our stuff. We have resources. We are making anything we have available.

So in this we're not I just don't want to tell I don't want to get into their normal operations. It's not to not be transparent. It's I don't feel like that's my place to do. But I'll be happy to tell you as soon as the council meeting is over. If you think that's a public issue, then we can go back and talk. Well, they have a plan to provide for I'll walk in. Show me your plan. Yes. Women have a separate dormatory. It's very separated and very well thought out and and so we're not doing one. We're relying on the Salvation Army.

We think we can stand that up better than if we were to do one. It's a great question. First thing I did coming in today was let's talk about some Corporal Act of Mercy stuff. We we need to be prepared on our own. Our team talked very frankly about it. And if we were to have a power outage where we are, the problems that flow out of that with a lot of folks in ours would compound this issue. What we think is if they can hold what we need and we're focused on one place, Mr. Lain that it's a much smarter logistics move for the city than to need two backup generators that we would need there. The Bolton Avenue Community Center is where we would do it. It is our best one, but it's massive in size. And to back that up, should it go down would require a jenny of a very large one. All of our jennies of that kind of size remember are backing up water, buildings, public safety issues. So that's an election we make, but we spent a lot of time on that question.

Mayor, having said that, if the emergency extended into that need, we would have a plan. We have enough. We do. Madam President, mayor, what was your question, Mr. Fley? He was he was going to get into the water well issues. These are things I'll cover. I'm just going to take y'all's questions and go through the report or if y'all want to pat It's up to you. I'll either do a briefing afterward and walk through it or I'll do my briefing as we go through it. It It's totally up to you guys. Whatever you want.

Okay. Question. My question mayor, the professional services and the special utilities, other divisions, other entities that I've spoke with around the state north of us have already contacted these people. Are we going to be in competition with getting those services or do we have enough people that will do this?

You're always in competition in an event like this and in this event in particular because of the size uh of the area affected. The amount of crews and everything taken up is more competitive than any event I've seen because it covers so much. So, you're always in competition with them. Uh but we ahead of time have agreements with certain ones that are uh approximate to us or close to us or understandings. And so uh I went through how many were crewed up and it I think we're in good shape. We've got some line crew other stuff we're waiting to see which is affected by that sort of that Lafayette line. But in in a short form answer your questions we're crewed up. So what exactly? Tell us all that you know about the pending ISIS.

Tell you all that I know about is coming. Um that's okay. I'm just trying to think. It's a big question. I'm trying to think of the order to unpack it. So tomorrow, uh the chief just whispered in my ear that he thought for sure. It's hard to get ahead of the state guys because you they have some things they could change. We think tomorrow at 300 p.m. the leg of 49 at least from that covers our end of the city to city. So 15.5 miles 15.5 miles would roughly be sugar not sugar house but past sugar uh will glenn to

air base is going to be shut down. So that whole elevated area would be shut down, which I'm sure our guys love just knowing from the briefings we've been in all day because it didn't happen last time. Remember the February 21 event in 2021, massive event? And we're up there having to rescue cars. And if y'all imagine, people are still riding while you're trying to make rescues of stranded, spun out cars. Craziest thing you've ever It was horrible. I wasn't married, but I know from the stories how bad it was. So this time that'll be shut down. So that gives you an indication right there of what the state and all the other officials are thinking of the onset times. Here's roughly what we know as of now. What we think would be that the non-freezing ju the rain and the temperature is going to cause there to be uh by the end of this somewhere between a quarter and a half an inch uh of ice sitting for a period of time that would exceed or at least go into Tuesday. And so practically that's a Wednesday thaw time. That's a lot of variance, but a quarter of an inch to give you an idea on a power line or something else is a massive amount of weight as you extend across. That's a lot. Uh a half an inch is a whole lot. So on rooftops, everything else, trees, boughs, limbs, etc. That's a whole lot of weight and it's going to be there for a while. We think that there will be frozen streets by certainly by 6 pm tomorrow, but they're setting this at an earlier time of 3 3 to 6. We treated as three to be on the conservative side. So events, everything before that will stop. Buses will stop tomorrow at noon. Correct.

Yes.

So we we're and we're pushing all this out separately, Malcolm. So, this will go out to all of our partners in our normal ways and more, working with uh media and others. We're going to push it out harder than normal, but just understand, we've got to tell people, don't make a plan to use the bus at noon where you would need it to go back. It's got to it's we're very clear. The buses will stop at noon tomorrow. Let's make it summarize it real simple. We consider 3:00 tomorrow deadline. that that's when things whether frozen or not everywhere we will consider that it is and that's when we start everything else. I think in truth it's going to be probably closer to six but if we it just depends on how how hard the precipitation is that that freezes. Uh if if we have half an inch of ice at any point during this for an extended period of time 12 hours 10 hours etc that that's going to be a lot of pressure on systems here. It's going to affect property both public and private. How will private property be affected? Well, you would have again roof ice dam. So, people's roofs will have their gutters all their as the incline goes all that dams up. It gets it folds under and gets under shingles, everything else. And as everybody knows, then when it thaws, it's the thaw moment. you get massive leaks and and you can have brand new roof if if if they didn't do it right with the most modern things and there are some modern things now that just are in the last few years being required if you don't have some of that in place uh you're going to have you can have problems. So we'll talk about that in a minute. We do monitor the private sector side because if there are reimbursements if in theory you were that large private people can make requests. I don't it doesn't look like the kind of event we're going to see that we have to treat this event like we're going to pay for it which is why you're getting this budget amendment. We will make all the

reimbursement. So all of our people I have assembled for you today. This is your EOP. These are your emergency operations procedure officers if you will. And what that means is everyone in this room can be out of their normal rank. So, uh, I'll become political adviser in sort of second place as an adviser. Uh, Sam Allen, the fire chief, will be the head of all operations in the city, which started today at 10:00 a.m. So, he is in control of making each decision, etc. We're in good hands.

Yes, sir. Dante, whom all of you know over here, who is already a higher rank in the city. But each of these guys, Sandra, they have control units under them. They make decisions. It's not a normal chain of command, if you will. Um, I have a question. Is there going to be anyone responsible for keeping the council informed at certain events?

Yes. So, that is my role and I do it. The council will know. I send out texts to the council on each thing that's happening. Mr. Caffrey's role is to the public. I take that is my role. I take the responsibility of keeping the council informed, taking your calls, calling you ahead of time, saying what things are happening. I also meet, do whatever. We're not going to be able to drive and get to many physical places together, but I will make sure I'm sending you regular texts. Careful about texts. Obviously, Stephen and them can ask for uh every text that we send as a public record. That doesn't bother me, but just, you know, an economy of words is good. uh there could be texts that wouldn't be public records if they pose a security threat or other things or we're in an active situation and I would usually let y'all know that. So in an emergency I might have a little header on the text that says here's what I'm about to talk about. Uh serious momentto- moment issues if there are any I will probably contact Cynthia only. Just bear with me for a second. She's the president. There will be some I would say madam president advise your members. There are some things if they were super formal, we might Cynthia and I advise Donna to put something out. But for the most part, I'm going to send all of you a text and uh it'll kind of tell you where things are. Hopefully, you won't be getting many because hopefully this is

going to be an event that involves a lot of property damage at the other end of it, which is terrible, but is not involving wrecks, power lines, deaths due to cold, etc. So, we're hyperfocused on making sure that people have a place to keep warm. I won't let that go. I am working with Salvation Army. I am at this moment. It doesn't mean it stays at this moment very satisfied with this new leadership and what they're bringing to the table. I personally went and met them and I'm very satisfied with this sergeant and his team and the quality of the building and the cleanliness and everything I saw about it was just couldn't have been more pleased today. Uh other thoughts about the events? Um there's just going to be a lot of power line issues and there's going to be a lot of people sliding off roadways if they get out there and choose to drive. We are usually not heavy about issuing exe mail orders that you can't go to work or go to businesses. We're usually particularly in hurricanes. This might be different. If it gets to the ice level that I think it does, uh I'll make that call. Sam would make the recommendation and the chief of police would make a call about widespread road closure, business shutdown. We do not generally at all enter into private business shutdowns, but we do enter into nobody on the road. So, you can figure that one out. Not telling you your business is closed. We're telling you you can't use the road to get there. Um, I think you're going to see a lot of it doesn't look Let me say this. Every model we see is modeling against our interests right now. Is that fair to say? No models are getting better like we had hoped. and thought a day or so, Nick. Others, we all were thinking that a day or so ago. No models are moving

our way, if you will. Is that right? Okay. Let me ask him about our driving conditions and driving on ice. I don't live pretty much everywhere, including Alaska for three years. There's no such thing as I could drive on ice. There's no such thing as what you could drive on ice, you know, particularly here in a city not used to. that tell you how to avoid getting hit the hardest, you know. So, I done lived uh Alaska, Korea, Germany, Maryland, what there's no such thing. So, if you're thinking about getting out there on ice, don't do it. Don't do it. Cuz once you start sliding, you're not going to stop until you hit whatever's in your way. Something stops you. You can drive on ice, you just can't stop,

right? So, uh that's a little advice. People say, "Well, I I live here. I can drive." No, you can't. No, you can't. I live too many places. I'm gonna

I'm gonna take y'all just through the recital of the declaration. I I won't read the whole every part uh in the the decreedal language. So recital versus decreed is the recital have a whereas they recite the basis. The decree is the now therefore afterward you could read that. All it does is authorize me to cause overtime, take people out of the rank of their employment and order them to do whatever we got to have them do. Uh the important thing is it is declared that there exists a state of emergency requiring formation and implementation of the emergency operations team and oper emergency operations procedures of the city of Alexandria beginning and this is when it began for real. uh January 21, 2026 at 3:50 p.m. is when I declared it and it ends as yet to be determined, but at least through Tuesday, January 27, 2026, noon CST. So, it started 21 at 3:50. It ends 27 unless there's other uh orders given. all divisions, departments, public, private, uh, uh, everybody is, uh, instructed to follow the orders as we give them. In your ordinance, I gave, uh, a February 6th date, I believe, and the reason for that is, if you look at the National Weather Service and the events, there's really two events that could happen. There's this event and a follow-on event.

Yeah, it is. I noticed that they had written your ordinance as it looks like a single event to me. So rather than correct that or make y'all have to go through an amendment, which if Trey wants to do, he can. The body of your ordinance talks about two events. And what that means is for our purposes and what you're authorizing. If we see one event start to wayne, thaw, etc., and a new event starts, they're still fully emergenced up. We're still in our full practice that way. We're going to roll into the second event. If that makes sense to you, we're supposed to

if we get outside of the six, we're going to come back to the council and I would for sure say if the two events have a discreet ending where we kind of see this one's ended and we have time to meet and the roads are thought, we'll bring you back and tell you about the first event and what we see coming. But in the case that this were to flow through in a terrible catastrophic situation, two events that approximately close temporally in time, you're we're riding through two events. Does that make sense? Okay.

All right. So, that's in the body of the ordinance. That's all it does differently than your title is explain that situation. Um, the recital are simple. It's a severe weather threat to Alexandria is being predicted according to National Weather Service and other reliable service sources. The significant weather event is large and affects all of Rapids Parish and beyond, potentially requiring joint emergency services and assistance in and around the Alexander Metropolitan Statistical Area. Whereas securing appropriate and additional professional service providers and authorizing overtime and special work details, especially for utilities and other divisions are essential functions, and each is required to be made at a meaningful time ahead of the potential event. And whereas the predicted weather event poses a significant threat to life and property in the city of Alexandria, National Weather Service has issued warnings that indicate Alexandria may experience problems such as down power transmission lines, extremely hazardous travel conditions, and life-threatening freezing temperatures. Thus, it is prudent to prepare for emergency response by the city to address such conditions after the event based on the current understanding of significant lingering negative effects including more storm activity on top of the event, a follow-on event. And so now therefore Ajac Roy and I make the declarations. Uh you're you're hearkening back to this but the truth is your ordinance is more authorization than this. So it assumes we didn't know at the time that there may be more orders than this one as we go on and see. So the authority granted in your ordinance is the larger. Normally it would be your ordinance would authorize more authority in here. In this case, it's the opposite, which is council strong, not merit strong. So, you that's a good thing, at least from the council's end. Um, I'll answer any questions. I think, uh, we also passed out to you the budget item. So, you'll see it's just half a million. Uh, that should cover us because that that would be a depleted amount that we need to have there. Guys, I can't tell you what this will go up to, how fast. I look at

a half a million for example and think of the last events we've done a half a million and as much as 750 in hurricanes I think of the cost of any service and where it is since precoid to now and I think there being I think 500,000 was short but get us started had the governor uh he's declared he has declared so therefore we have state money coming in behind it sometimes

we don't necessarily so no my answer is we are that we are on our own until we meet certain national thresholds and make those reimbursements. But I said I'd give y'all on that. So the way we run our system, Curtis over here, we keep every AP incident action plan together. Military, you understand that. And there, you know, it can be one or two sentences, but every act we take, we document and that is essential to be reimbursed. And so we had a long meeting today about that. I am happy to take y'all through our whole what we do at the EOP there. I don't it's up to you on time, but I can walk you through what I did this morning with the team and show you how we do it or we can do it after. We can do it in pieces. But just know that each I take each division where are we and through the conversion line this area utilities where are we and I get reports from them about where everything is and I ask a lot of questions. Landon is here. Tell me about the zoo. What are our animal husbandry issues? Do you have the proper genic generator set up? Are the Jenny's there? He actually kind of felt like he wanted another one and we've located it since then for him. So that's done. Uh

mayor, go ahead. Do we know where our most vulnerable citizens are? Uh no, I would have no way on the street. On the street like So that's a great I'm glad both y'all are saying you're kind of giving a different answer. That's a great point and question. We had that discussion this morning. My obligation is not just to what whom we would consider the homeless folks, which is there. In this event, I have to consider that there will be numerous households that are in housing that is substandard. That's right.

That have floor heaters, all kinds of other problems that are high high risk. And so I can't look at the housing need just as taking care of homeless, but instead having plans to take on other folks who are vulnerable, whose families may not have the resources uh to do that. And so I would encourage the citizens look for the vulnerable whom you know, not just in your comm, not just family, but in the community and help identify those needs. uh and we will figure out ways to handle that. And I would also encourage the citizens, don't wait until we're in the event because we will be trapped by the same resource problems as everyone else. Meaning the roads will be impassible. So think about during the hurricanes at sometimes like where are the crews? Well, they can't go out in a full lightning storm. They have to wait. Similarly here, there are going to be times in this where it's going to be very hard. We have people that can mow through it a little bit, but it won't be like they can just be out there. And so the time to identify the vulnerable in the community is now. It isn't tomorrow at 3:00 and it isn't tomorrow at 6:00 p.m. It's right now at 4:30 today uh on the 23rd. We need to have knowledge about that. So any way all of you can help that gives us a better hard count Cynthia on do we need to stand up something else and if we did where and how and it should be as approximate as we can to Salvation Army that probably is Bolton Avenue it's our best asset to do it but I don't know that uh we have to we have to think about how we could stand up anything if we had power losses so right now I'm good on Salvation Army so be thinking about vulnerable uh people in the community Um,

so let's let's do this. Mayor, why why don't we uh plan for the work? I mean, I know we planning for the works now, but with that post avenue, how long would it take us to set it up? Say if we give you a call at 12:00 this tonight, how long could we have that set up? I don't if you It wouldn't be at 12:00. We wouldn't how we would do it. We we we would know tomorrow those kinds of things. I look, there's a little bit of disappointment in in some of this. I'm not going to knock our other partners. I would say that our taxpayers built a center out

there for some very specific purposes and it was supposed to stop the whole need for a return to what we're doing, which is marshalling local resource, right? when that was the point and I I I feel confident about where now where we are with the Salvation Army. I will have a better private text to you guys later about any changes.

What I don't want to create is what I say here, which is I get it. It's transparency and but it can lead to other people meaning well asking how they can help and support and I I just would say give me a second you're a military guy. It's a logistics issue. That being said and I would think I've been thinking about the same thing that you just brought up with that facility that been built and we only use it I mean with the hurricane if there's some kind of way that I mean what's the relationship broken? What's the the deal? It's it's triggered

I don't like to speculate. I I speculate that it's triggered a lot by heated events like hurricane events and that its triggers had not thought through in Louisiana well cold events but we're seeing I

Yes. And I get the let me have a conversation with you a little more offline about it. Again, not to be not transparent. I'm be here's my transparency on it. I don't want to make state actors mad and I don't want to downplay any decisions or challenges they have that I don't know about. Suppose there's an issue out there to that infrastructure that's unique or specific to this and I don't know. So, it would be very premature for me to comment on it. But I but I am concerned because that's why it was built to take out this whole need of identifying local assets. There are other

Salvation Army from two years ago to now very different place loving what they're doing and and we're going to we're going to work through that. So with that being said, um maybe after this event Yes. we can meet with them and find out discuss Yes. Yes ma'am. Okay. Yes. Just to get if anything a better understanding, right? If it's no cold events, then we need to think about assets of how we're going to do that. Well, sometimes it's just asking the question and showing that there's a need and a desire to have that partnership. So, we have asked today. Yes. Oh, okay. But it's going to get called every winter.

You know, we this is the first part of winter. We need to go ahead and try to figure out what's going on there because what about the coliseum? So, I would just say that there's a place designed for it and and that's a place that should be hidden. I would say the coliseum is less designed. Look, I we see the horrors of I just don't think that's where you pack. It's not a a venue to pack people like that. Um

and we're not going to have that amount of people, guys. It's not the the biggest thing we can do as a community right now is identify vulnerable people that we whom we know that we can touch and know what they're where they are because people all do know that. Um could be housing that somebody would be embarrassed nor to kind of out someone on but you know they're living in a house that is not connected to anything and you didn't want to out them because it's illegal to do that and all that. Maybe that's a time where you you give us a call and say

you got a promise you won't use this afterward, but we got to do this now. I mean, those are the kind of decisions you make in emergencies that normally go, I can't promise you that. We're going to have to then immediately do something. But if it's about someone's life and we're in the middle of an event like this, uh, our decision making, uh, is we weigh things a little differently. Mayor, if I may, uh, the EOP lead versus Mr. Curtis Fman, am I correct? No. Uh, as I I just said, it's Sam out. Okay. Sam, police chief. I mean, fire chief. Fire chief. All right. Curtis is the assistant, but he coordinates about three positions uh in that role.

All right. I spoke with several ministers this morning after they found out about our meeting today. And they're uh just a PSA. A lot of churches have church for Sunday. And uh the Rap Parish School Board was active enough to cancel all activities tonight through Monday and they will come back Monday. So that's just a public service announcement since everybody may be watching this don't go to uh you know churches are going to be closed. Most churches pastors that called me this morning are cancelling services and they're going to do uh online service for Mon for Sunday, excuse me. And I'm glad the school board was proactive to cancel everything starting tonight through Monday so children won't be out there right

in danger. All right. Thank you for uh correcting me on the OP lead person. Question. Um let's go over Joel. Mr. Green brought up some important points. Uh Michael, you want to give our closures now that we know of?

Good afternoon. Uh at this time we have closed all city facilities uh as of for Monday of the coming week. Uh so all offices all facilities will be closed. Uh we will end uh bus operations at noon on Saturday. Uh and trash pickup will be uh suspended for Monday as well. Uh depending on how the weather progresses, we will get back to uh you all as well as the public as it relates to what we will be doing going forward.

Thank you. I looking at the models, uh, Tuesday doesn't look good. It's It's hard. I don't normally I would say we'll let you know on Monday doing it. I see you laughing, Angie. I know why you're laughing. I She's making her plans and ain't going to be work on Tuesday. That's and and since we talking about Tuesday, u, we're going to reschedule council meet. I saw we were going to ask y'all and then didn't then didn't want to overstep our bounds, but there's not going to be any way to resource it. We can't ask people to draw. Tuesday does not look good. We're going to reschedule and um Miss Donna sent out an email to everybody.

We received it. So, no counsel on Tuesday. Um I don't normally do it this way, but on a preliminary it doesn't look good for Tuesday. If we were to bring everybody back or say Tuesday's open means there a whole lot of predictions uh were wrong in a very good way. Wrong. So, uh let me go over our what can you do at home. So, at home, for those listening to us, and this would have been part of the briefing later, but we can still do whatever you guys need. Listen to weather bulletins. So, pay attention to uh news uh sources. Listen to weather bulletins. Uh cut off any kind of water you would have running now, which you shouldn't because it's not like you're running your SP sprinklers this time of year. At least most people, some people might be. When you drip water, you should drip the water. drip, drip, drip, drip. It's fine if it's a quick drip, but if you think you need a stream, you don't. The pressure is sufficient to do that. Do not stream run your water, no matter how thin the stream is. One of our greatest risks would be going through elevated water storage and and having that problem. That is a real issue at home. Please be a partner with us at the city. Drip your water. Don't run it. We could have a problem if we run out. All elevated storage right now is full. What does that mean? So the big whopper behind Spirits Burger King right there, that's a million gallons. So the those at that size and you know where they are in the city, that holds 1 million gallons. Uh we have several and a few not quite as large as that. So we How much is in elevated storage right now roughly? 13 million.

Yeah, I was going to I got scared, but if I thought my numbers right about 13 million gallons um on a on a hot day, uh we don't we don't touch we that's not we wouldn't hit that. We we wouldn't hit nearly that. Ironically, people get this really wrong. So, you imagine that we would set that limit on of the hottest day of the year. It's when people run their water in events like this for frozen that we hit those kinds of numbers. So, please drip your water. I know people, oh, you have to run it by it has to be the stream to do it. Not just drip is enough. You could even be less than that.

So, I have a question. One faucet or multiple? So, it that's a great question. What faucets do you do? It kind of you'd have to kind of know your house really well to know what what they go on. Um, what do you want me to say is the best practice? Another practice to help come on up. Come up and introduce yourself. Yeah. Barrett Denorf. I'm the water operations superintendent. Um, another practice that helps, especially if you are currently having some heat in your home, open your cabinet doors, let the hot air of your house swirl around underneath the faucet, and it helps keep everything Yeah.

thought out. Yes. And these are just practical things for for people who have a lot of faucets and things outside. If you know you're not going to be using those things, they'll naturally thaw and take care of themselves. You don't have to drip every single thing. It's about it's about dripping the things where you know you're going to have use during the time of this. So if you're fortunate to have outside sinks or kitchen stuff, don't that please don't focus on that right now. No. In fact, anything outside the house, if you could wrap it up would be better and and leave that to go natural, contract, and thaw on its own. Sir, uh, on the dripping, if as the mayor just said, if you know your house,

would it be best to drip the farthest faucet from the front of your home where the water income comes in? And uh, I put foam covers over my two externals and I do open my cabinet doors to let the air circulate through. That's why I want to know since he said lower your house, how far and use the farthest faucet. Yes. to drip. Thank you. No problem. Yes. Cold. Cold stream. Not hot. Excuse me. Don't use your hot. Use cold. Some of these things sound counterintuitive to people. It's not. Use your cold.

Um, let's see what else on that. That's a great point, Mr. Green. Thank you. Uh, anything else on water? So, look guys, this is important at home to do. You have to conserve water. When you say at home, well, someone else can do the conservative. I'mma run mine. There are a bunch of other people saying the same thing. Don't be that person. Drip the drip it. Uh, we have set up Go ahead. All of these are going to be on a constant rule that that's going out starting in the morning. So, the public will be notified of these particular things, dripping faucets and so forth and so on as a part of our

with graphics very straightforward said sort of catchy. We'll make sure. So also we're prepared and some of this preparation is about what happens after it. So when the thaw starts, that's when damage occurs. That's when debris needs to be clean on streets. So if tomorrow you've got time off and you're the neighborhood watch and you you keep watch over things and you have time and it's safe, go out and clean out any catch basin you see that has any bit of straw or b anything in it blocking it. That could be a dam later. uh when everything is really a lot of water run off. If everybody remembers February 2021 when it thawed, it looked like a rainstorm was happening when it wasn't raining with that amount of water moving. So, let's make sure of that. Our public uh systems and utilities to them are backed up as best as we can there. Uh the road systems and bridges, I heard them on a call talking about Purple Heart and some of those things. I think that I 49's going to shut before some of those to allow some ingress and egress between Pineville and Alexandria, but they're going to make those decisions on the fly. And when things get dangerous, it's going to happen.

And and each is going to I think Purple Heart and Jackson, it's just going to be Curtis Coleman. Purple Heart and Curtis Coleman will both be one lane of traffic.

Jackson will close. It's met you. That'll be frozen quick. Okay. Uh, other things about home. I said the basins. Oh, driveways. This is a strange one that also seems counterintuitive. If your driveway has a slope, a large incline from carport to going down like mine. Uh, don't loan the hard way. If you're deciding to play around and back out the car, if you got a nice heavy truck like I, it could slide off of that across a fence and into your neighbor's yard. didn't happen to me, but almost did. Make sure if you have those kinds of inclines, you're talking about a half an inch that can be on there, you're not stopping that. So, don't go out at all and drive if you don't have to. That's not going to be a good thing to be doing. Heed the executive orders and essential business directives. We've known in storms, everybody on this council knows, people pass by in the water, pushing water into houses and all that. We don't like it. Nobody usually gets arrested for that, but it makes a citizen mad at you when you do it. This is a little different. You're endangering all the public safety folks if you're out on the roads during this ICE. If you're not supposed to be, and there was a deliberate and clear order at the executive level not to use roads, they're not going to. If you get stopped for that, it it could result in an arrest. It could. So, let's let's be careful about that. So stay off the road if we get to that level at all. Stay off the roads no matter what. You don't need to be on the roads tomorrow uh and the next day and Sunday if it's that big a problem. Keep debris and trash out of any diversion canals and drainage rights of way. Assemble your own little disaster supplies kit um just to make sure in case you have to go to a neighbor's house or something else. Get your essential things together. Um prescriptions, all that needs to be taken care of. Flashlights. Flashlights.

Flashlights. You didn't hear me say candles for a reason. I'm not telling you you can't have candles. I'm saying candles cause fires. Flashlights. Flashlights. Flashlights. Have batteries. Um, a battery operated radio would be something to have. I can tell you that if things get bad enough where we have massive outages, we will go to our radio partners. I've already talked to Stephen and talked to him at Sinlaw Broadcasting and you'll hear us. we'll we'll be back to radio like we've had to do in the past. Um there are also people who don't have this, believe it or not. And this so I'm talking to them about how they might could have some people at the radio station standing by. Uh I know that Stephen was asked to spend the night. I'm not sure if he said yes.

Community big big community player council. So if we have to get somebody there and back, we will. Um, I'll just answer any other questions. I think we've gone through uh everything. Again, I will take y'all through any level you want to go through of the detail this morning, but that that's most things in a nutshell where we are. See, I know with most you're liable for your wake. I would assume that you're also liable for your wake in a car if I do damage to you.

Yeah, we won't be seeing the the wake until it's thawning. And I doubt you'll see it then. What we're going to see is people sliding off the road, hitting a utility pole, knocking out people's power, which are all real things, and then causing a crew that could be saving a neighborhood from an issue to have to go divert and take care of someone because they decided they could drive on ice and knock out a utility. I look, I don't think that even if you weren't arrested, that's going to be a huge cost. The city would recoup. They would not we'd recoup that. So, let's not be knocking out our utilities. All right, questions.

Also, you might remember that we we do recoup some of the expenses that we have, but it's really not very fast. Yeah, even if it all gets declared through FEMA the right way and there's a lot of dynamic flux with FEMA's, it's a lot. It takes I don't know, David, y'all are still recovering stuff from Laura. Yeah. In this in this cycle of the council. So, We don't we try not to depend on that too much. All right. Uh media questions. What is this about? We need a vote on this. Y'all have to vote yet.

Let's vote on this. All in favor? Any oppose? Motion carried. All right. Thank you, council. All right. Anything now? You guys want to set up upstairs and ask anything or y'all got a lot? Good to go. Good to go. You want to go in the world? No problem. Ajourn the meeting. Meet ajourned.